Tuesday 11th
of March 2014
When 12
countries signed the Washington Treaty back in 1949, article 5 was the
cornerstone of the newborn alliance. Article 5 stated:
“The
Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or
North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently
they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of
the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of
the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked
by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such
action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and
maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Although Article 5 made very clear that the
American Congress did not agree to an unconditional declaration of war in case of an attack in
Europe, the European allies got what they wanted from the treaty, which was
article 5 in combination with a large deployment of American soldiers in
Europe. This large presence of GI’s in combination with the type of war we
expected in Europe in those days (massive attacks with thousands of tanks, guns
and planes), made it absolutely clear that any military attack on European
soil, would bring the United States of America into the war. The credibility of
article 5 was high and it prevented the Soviet Union for 50 years from taking
military actions against Western Europe. In the so-called “Cold War”, we saw as
a result of this limitation, that military confrontation between the two global
ideologies, communism and capitalism, took place elsewhere in the world, but
not in Europe.
Change
Article 5
as the cornerstone of the treaty kept well in place until the 1990’s, when the
Iron Curtain came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. The Warsaw pact divisions
never marched in our direction… they just faded away. Although in every NATO
summit since, the importance of article 5 was reconfirmed, the fact that the
American troops left Europe (especially Germany) made article 5 go back to what
is actually was in the first place: a rather vague political promise on paper.
Something
else happened simultaneously. Former Warsaw Pact counties left the pact and
joined the free world. The border of the Russian sphere of influence moved 1000
kilometres east, along the borders of countries like: Poland, Estonia, Latvia,
Hungary and Rumania, and far away from countries like the Netherlands, Belgium,
Italy, France, Germany and Denmark. The result of this was that the perception
of the level of external threat in a lot of NATO countries reduced to close to
zero. And very fast not only the Americans but also: British, Dutch, Belgian,
Italian and French troops – once deployed shoulder to shoulder along the
Alliances eastern border – were withdrawn to their home countries and often
shortly thereafter disbanded.
Old and New
NATO
reached out to the new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and offered
them membership of NATO under certain conditions. Most of the new countries
grabbed the opportunity with both hands, for some at great cost. Becoming a
member of NATO, they believed, was the insurance that the freedom in central
and eastern Europe - which came to many as a surprise - would not be a
temporary softening of the Russian sphere of influence, like the temporary
changes in the political climate in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
To those new NATO members, article 5 still was the cornerstone of the alliance
and to them this article looked hard and reliable. After all: it had prevented
the Russians 50 years from the use military of force against Western Europe.
But
reliability is always the multiplication of the “will” and the “capability” to
fight. The new NATO countries did not notice, that article 5 without the
massive deployment of troops along the alliances border (capabilities) results
in article 5 being an empty shell. The texts of article 5 offered every
opportunity to the countries to limit their reaction to a military attack on a
new member to “other than military means”, with could be close to nothing. And
also the will was decreasing. During the cold war economic ties between NATO
and Warsaw Pact countries were very limited because of the travel and trade
restrictions between the blocs. Western European countries at that time were
free to take a firm stand. It is a fact that meanwhile most Western European
countries have strong economic ties with Russia.
This
resulted in Europe in two sorts of NATO countries: Old Nations (relatively rich
and safe) and the New Nations (relatively poor and unsafe). This brought about
a situation where almost all countries in Europe reduced their defence spending
rapidly. The old nations felt no threat; the new nations (busy to transform
their battered economies from the communist to the capitalist system) could not
afford to invest lots of money in military hardware. The attempts of NATO to
transform the armed forces of old and new countries alike were therefore in
most European countries excuses for major reductions in military capabilities.
The result of
all these developments: almost all European NATO countries strongly reduced
their defence spending, almost none keeping up with the promised 2 % of GDP.
Furthermore, soldiers from USA and other old NATO countries were not longer
deployed along the new border of the alliance. On top of that, most old NATO
nations are nowadays heavily dependant on Russian gas and oil and their
politicians showed very little appetite for sending soldiers into violent
conflicts far away from their borders. All these developments reduced the
deterrence of article 5 against possible - especially Russian - aggression to
close to zero.
Sleep
The
geo-political developments of the 1990-ies lulled the new (and the old) NATO
countries into a deep sleep, in which “threat to territorial integrity” seemed
something of a past era. A confused and weakened Russia seemed willing to
cooperate with its former opponents and nobody noticed the fact that the
meaning of article 5 to the new members diverged more and more from the
psychological state of mind and shrinking military capabilities of the old NATO
members. The fact that NATO got more and more involved in out-of-area conflicts
(Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan) and after 2001 the Global War on Terror,
strengthened this false sense of security within the Alliance of territorial
safety.
So until
very recently the situation was very clear: whereas the new NATO countries felt
safe and secure within their borders as a member of NATO protected by article
5, all conditions necessary for the execution of military action in the case of
an article 5 violation of the territorial integrity on European soil (of the
new members) had disappeared.
Awakening
After the
Georgian crisis of august 2008 the new NATO countries got their first wake up
call. Russia showed that under Putin it had taken a new security course with
the aim to recover its lost “sphere of influence”. And Putin showed that he did
not hesitate to use force and was even willing to ignore the principles of
international law to achieve this goal. Slowly new NATO members that are part
of this sphere of influence start to realize that a military reaction from NATO
to some kind of limited Russian aggression on European soil is nowadays highly
unlikely. Article 5 in combination with the absence of deployed troops from old
states along their borders and strengthened by an economical dependency of old
states on Russian gas and oil, would make a decision within NATO to stand their
ground with military force during an attack unthinkable. What happens at the
moment in Ukraine is the next step in the restoration of the Russian sphere of
influence. And more will follow. Some people argue that being a member of NATO
would help countries like Georgia and Ukraine to keep the Russian Bear out. I
strongly doubt this!
Let’s face
the facts. Article 5 gives the old states – being far away from the endangered
areas - more than enough room to do next to nothing in case of such an attack,
especially if this would be a limited one. I strongly doubt that something
different would happen if a similar small military operation would take place
in NATO member states like Estonia or Latvia. Therefore my conclusion is that
in the present situation article 5 to the new NATO partners is not a very
credible security of their borders. Old NATO states are very unlikely to spill
blood for new members. Sometimes it
takes a few crises like Georgia and Ukraine to realize this to the full. So it
might be time to rethink article 5. Without deployed troops from the old
Nations in the new border nations, article 5 is worth next to nothing. And
getting more and more new nations to join NATO is selling them a very dangerous
illusion.
Fr@ns
M@tser
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